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Sunday, 18 July 2010

[News] Bond's Back & Blizzard's Backlash

So far, for me, July has been a funny old month. Not only has it been somewhat busy both with work and things happening outside of work, it also feels like we're not quite in the summer yet with the weather changing on a daily basis.

This week I've gone and bought another Wii console (one of the shiny black ones). Since the launch of the Wii, this new black one marks my third purchase of Nintendo's machine. Why I hear you ask? I've been contemplating purchasing another one for a little while now. I'd managed to play the New Super Mario Bros title on a friends console, I'd finally got to play the first Mario Galaxy game prior to the release of the second and I was a bit disappointed with how little I'd played of Zelda: Twilight Princess. On top of that, myself and fellow Blast Processor/friend Tom went and bought the latest Pokemon title on the DS (Soul Silver) which encouraged Tom to then go out and buy Pokemon Revolution on the Wii, which THEN made me think...'if I had a Wii, we could battle over the internet with our Pokemon...on a TV...with better graphics!'.All of the above striked fear in my wallet, but the worse was yet to come. As mentioned in a previous post, E3 happened...and Nintendo did a stirling job giving Wii owners what they wanted. The thought of not being able to play the new Zelda, Kirby, Donkey Kong and Metroid was too much for me to bear.

So now I own another Wii, and this time, hopefully I'll hang on to it.

You may, or may not have noticed, that when I briefly discussed E3 in this blog post I failed to mention within the Nintendo conference paragraph the return of Goldeneye. Indeed, Goldeneye is returning, but it's no exact port of the original. Eurocom, the studio behind the re imaging of Goldeneye will be taking iconic scenes and set pieces from the original N64 game, however they'll be mixed in with brand new levels and set pieces inspired by Daniel Craig's interpretation of Bond (it'll follow the basic plot of the film, just some bits are being 're-told' as it were). Speaking of Daniel Craig...it'll be his likeness you'll see as Bond, not Pierce Brosnan.

So the storyline has changed...what about the multiplayer? I lost count of how many epic games me and my friends had when we used to plug in 4 N64 pads! The new version will have multiplayer, but the maps won't be the same layout as the original. Returning though will be a extensive roster of playable characters and game modes, such as 'The Golden Gun'. Early videos and screenshots visually look impressive, and from videos I've seen of the game in action, the frame rate seems very smooth. Fingers crossed it'll do the original proud when it hits shelves before Christmas.

Blizzard (of Warcraft/Starcraft fame) hit the headlines recently with the introduction of Real I.D., which allows players to contact their friends using Blizzard's Battle.net accounts, meaning if your playing World of Warcraft while a mate of yours is playing Starcraft 2, you'll still be able to chat! The same goes for if your both playing WoW, but on different servers, you'll still be able to chat.

Aswell as this feature it also intended to change how gamer's names would appear on their Warcraft forums, which traditionally allowed gamer to post replies using one of their characters that they play as online. Blizzard however, were set to change the name of the posters to their real names (as displayed in their Battle.net accounts). This caused outrage in the World of Warcraft community, with many forum posters worried about 'online stalkings'.

The backlash of this update was infact so large that Blizzard took a u-turn, and scrapped that particular feature of Real I.D. In Blizzards defense, they stated that the update was intending to stop some of the hate-filled messages that can appear on the World of Warcraft forums aimed at the developers and other gamers. However, as good as their intentions were, I could see why gamers were worried. I very rarely use my full/real name online when posting on forums/websites for pure privacy reasons. The outcome of this is a sure sign that you really can't mess with a mob of Warcrafters...